The news about Jason Collins brought the Wizards their largest burst of positive national publicity in years. When was the last time SI put a Wizard on its cover? When was the last time hundreds if not thousands of people across the country wrote of their intentions to buy a Wizards jersey? When was the last time CNN and Good Morning America wanted to talk to a Wizards player?

... Today Jason Collins of the Washington Wizards announced he is gay, Conan OBrien began. That's a big story. Big story. He said I don't know what's been tougher on my family, announcing that I'm gay or announcing that I play for the Washington Wizards. 

(rant on) Why Jason Collins felt this need to shout out about his bedroom habits is beyond me and the MSM fawning all over the guy and treating him like he's some sort of hero has driven me to almost hurl! Personally, I could care less whether Jason Collins prefers to have sex with guys, it's his business, but he made it everyone else's business and the MSM has been way over the top trumpeting this, shoving this man's sexual proclivities in our faces! (/rant off)

The Wizards used to be the Baltimore Bullets (named after either an old colt or remington factory) which moved down I 95 and became the Washington Bullets.

Washington DC then became the murder capital of the US. Some people decided that it was bad for the basketball team to be named the bullets when the city was number 1 in murders per capita.

So after a long public debate, it came down to “seadogs” or “wizards”.

Seadogs was the fans choice and people were laughing at wizards because of the KKK and the fact that the city is 80 percent black. Furthermore, the city is very segregated with the whites in the upper class neighborhood and jobs.

However, the powers that be decided on Wizards anyway. Why they did that, I don’t know. There is nothing magical about the wizards or Wash DC.

gays in the military and gays in sports was a priority for the left. Military and sports are associated with real manliness - strong and brave. By obsessing over gays in the military and sports they hope to tear down these bastions of masculinity.

I agree with you, vet! Only the homosexual lobby would find it necessary to get in front of a bunch of cameras and microphones to extoll the virtues of their worthless, unproductive sexual habits. Homosexuality is only about how people copulate. It has nothing to do with love, procreation, or positive outcomes. Homosexuality deals solely with the unnatural act of sodomy between men and the use of phallic devices between women.

I personally believe the homosexual lobby is trying to bring down every major pillar of American life, piece by piece. They went real big with marriage, and they are still fighting that battle. If they start taking down entire sports leagues, they can remove any and all traces of masculinity or sportsmanship in our culture. That’s what this is about.

11
posted on 04/30/2013 6:18:12 AM PDT
by rarestia
(It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)

Now, similar to how teachers brainwash the young, media brainwash the masses and Hollywood brainwashes the low information voters, this is a way to get to sports fans, many of whom are white males and not necessarily political junkies.

Lib women will be emboldened by this news and if/when the Dems nominate a liberal woman in 2016, the gay discussion will be one step below womens’ issues in the campaign. If we all think 2012 was bad with victimization, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Anyone not a Dem will be labeled backwards, hateful, etc., etc. etc., more so than at any point during Barry’s reign.

21
posted on 04/30/2013 6:43:19 AM PDT
by ConservativeStatement
(Obama is the "Disco Duck" president. A no-substance novelty that reached number one.)

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

Women, you cry for freedom. You say you are no longer satisfied with men; they make you unhappy. We, connoisseurs of the masculine face, the masculine physique, shall take your men from you then. We will amuse them; we will instruct them; we will embrace them when they weep. Women, you say you wish to live with each other instead of with men. Then go and be with each other. We shall give your men pleasures they have never known because we are foremost men too, and only one man knows how to truly please another man; only one man can understand the depth and feeling, the mind and body of another man.

All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.

All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.

If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.

We shall write poems of the love between men; we shall stage plays in which man openly caresses man; we shall make films about the love between heroic men which will replace the cheap, superficial, sentimental, insipid, juvenile, heterosexual infatuations presently dominating your cinema screens. We shall sculpt statues of beautiful young men, of bold athletes which will be placed in your parks, your squares, your plazas. The museums of the world will be filled only with paintings of graceful, naked lads.

Our writers and artists will make love between men fashionable and de rigueur, and we will succeed because we are adept at setting styles. We will eliminate heterosexual liaisons through usage of the devices of wit and ridicule, devices which we are skilled in employing.

We will unmask the powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals. You will be shocked and frightened when you find that your presidents and their sons, your industrialists, your senators, your mayors, your generals, your athletes, your film stars, your television personalities, your civic leaders, your priests are not the safe, familiar, bourgeois, heterosexual figures you assumed them to be. We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks. Be careful when you speak of homosexuals because we are always among you; we may be sitting across the desk from you; we may be sleeping in the same bed with you.

There will be no compromises. We are not middle-class weaklings. Highly intelligent, we are the natural aristocrats of the human race, and steely-minded aristocrats never settle for less. Those who oppose us will be exiled.

We shall raise vast private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you. We shall conquer the world because warriors inspired by and banded together by homosexual love and honor are invincible as were the ancient Greek soldiers.

The family unit-spawning ground of lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence--will be abolished. The family unit, which only dampens imagination and curbs free will, must be eliminated. Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the genetic laboratory. They will be bonded together in communal setting, under the control and instruction of homosexual savants.

All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our only gods are handsome young men. We adhere to a cult of beauty, moral and esthetic. All that is ugly and vulgar and banal will be annihilated. Since we are alienated from middle-class heterosexual conventions, we are free to live our lives according to the dictates of the pure imagination. For us too much is not enough.

The exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite comprised of gay poets. One of the major requirements for a position of power in the new society of homoeroticism will be indulgence in the Greek passion. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from a position of influence. All males who insist on remaining stupidly heterosexual will be tried in homosexual courts of justice and will become invisible men.

We shall rewrite history, history filled and debased with your heterosexual lies and distortions. We shall portray the homosexuality of the great leaders and thinkers who have shaped the world. We will demonstrate that homosexuality and intelligence and imagination are inextricably linked, and that homosexuality is a requirement for true nobility, true beauty in a man.

We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution.

Back in the ‘20s, Bill Tilden, considered by many old-timers to be the greatest tennis player of his generation and many generations after, was well-known as being a homosexual. Except he never announced he was despite the fact that virtually everyone in the tennis world (and many outside) knew he was. That didn’t stop people from proclaiming his greatness as an athlete. Ditto for Navratilova, King, and numerous other female athletes since who announced their homosexuality and paid no price for it. So the idea that Collins is some sort of courageous pioneer is patently ridiculous.

When they were in Baltimore, they used to play the recorded sound of a bullet being fired after a home team basket. Now that they’re in Washington, they don’t have to use recorded sounds of bullets being fired....they’re usually for real.

It’s hard to say who knew what when about Bill Tilden or what they may have heard. It sounds like the rumors and suspicions really spread after his 1920s heyday when his career was already in decline. After Tilden was arrested in the 1940s, he was ostracized. Nobody would have anything to do with him. So he may not have been an example of a homosexual accepted in the sports world.

Certainly in those days and many years after, open homosexuality was not accepted and probably punished. Nevertheless, many people in and out of the world of tennis either knew or suspected Tilden was a homosexual, but there was no effort to punish or ban him from tennis tournaments. Ty Cobb watched Tilden play one time and exclaimed “who is that swish?” or words to that effect. Tilden was still playing competitive pro tennis into his forties. He even played in the U.S Open at the age of 53 in 1946. Tilden was ostracized after being caught with an underage boy later that year and spent time in prison. Then he was shunned by the tennis and sports world. In the early ‘70s, Frank Deford of SI wrote a long article about Tilden.

” Hes not even a scrub. He is currently a free agent looking for a job, so this was his big chance to promote a limp career. “

Jason Collins has answered the old locker room question: what would you be willing to do for a million dollars? He’s extended his career for a year or two and he’ll get paid. But will he ever be seen kissing another man? Or will some woman be filing a praternity suit against him? It would be really interesting if it turns out he faked it to get another pay day.

Ty Cobb watched Tilden play one time and exclaimed who is that swish? or words to that effect.

Cobb maybe would have said that about any tennis player. DeFord says that the Tennis Association did know of the rumors and feared that they'd become public. Tilden had some mannerisms that could have bothered people.

I've also seen him compared to Michael Jackson in that people knew he was "weird" or "different" but didn't know more than that. And in both cases the pedophilia may have taken time to develop. Once Tilden had passed his prime his interest in boys became more blatant, and his activities eventually led to his arrest.

I suspect the wider public didn't know and didn't want to know. They could be unforgiving if they found out (or authorities who claimed to act in the public interest could), but aside from rumormongers there was a tendency to assume nothing untoward was going on. When nobody declared themselves as anything sexually or got caught in a compromising situation, there wasn't much interest in stirring things up.

How the h... do you know? He did say it about Tilden...who he expressly went to watch...he wasn't reported to have said it about any other tennis player. Obviously, many people didn't know he was a homosexual...my point was that many did suspect, but either didn't care or didn't do anything to cause Tilden problems. Certainly many of the tennis players knew or suspected. For one thing, Tilden never showered with the rest of the players after matches. He even confided in a few heterosexual players. Would he have been run out of the tennis world if he had publicly announced? Maybe...but the fact remains many people knew or strongly suspected, and Tilden's career was not derailed until after he committed a crime.

Ty was said to rant about all kinds of minority groups.* He wasn't necessarily a clear-sighted unbiased observer.

There's either more or less to the story, though, as Tilden coached Ty Jr. at tennis.

My point was just, 1) you'd have to look closely at source material to find out who knew what when and even then it would be hard to come to a conclusion about what he was doing and what people knew about it (as is the case with Michael Jackson in his early days), and 2) the rumored sexual orientations of athletes in the past is very different from today's situation.

I'm not sure we actually disagree about that. Look at it one way there may have been some tolerance in the past, but it may also just have been that people didn't know or didn't realize.

You could be right, but what's clear to me is people now are much more likely to write about Tilden as being "flamboyant" or "open" or "out" about his sexuality than they were in the past. The shift may say as much about people today as it does about Tilden in the 1920s.

__________________

* As an example of the uncertainty of these things, when I do google searches related to Ty Cobb, along with the usual references to his rants against Blacks and Jews, I find articles denying that he was any sort of racist or bigot.

Sure...I agree...things were a lot dicier for homosexual athletes in those days. But my point is that the Americans of those days in general weren’t the homophobic monsters liberals like to paint. I’m sure there were many athletes, entertainers, celebrities, etc. of old who were rumored to be homosexuals, but like Tilden, went on with their careers without being unduly punished or ostracized. Like Liberace who all adults knew was a homosexual but mostly didn’t care.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.